Popular Victorian women writers considers a diverse group of women writers within the Victorian literary marketplace. It looks at authors such as Ellen Wood, Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and Charlotte Yonge as well as less well-known writers including Jessie Fothergill and Eliza Meteyard. Each essay sets the individual author within her biographical and literary context and provides refreshing insights into their work. Together they bring the work of largely unknown authors and new perspectives on known authors to critical and public attention. Accessible and informative, the book is ideal for students of Victorian literature and culture as well as tutors and scholars of the period.

Aged 26 and newly married, Juliana Ewing left England in 1867, bound for Fredericton, New Brunswick, where her husband had been posted to the army garrison. A famed children's writer and skilful artist, Juliana used her talents in chronicling for her family in Yorkshire her day-to-day experiences in the maritime city from Confederation to the withdrawal of British troops in 1869. In 101 letters, reproduced almost in their entirety, Juliana recreates the “high colonial” society of mid-nineteenth-century Fredericton. Her letters unconsciously also reveal herself – her courage, intelligence, gaity and, above all, her loving nature. Witty, perceptive, and dramatic, her letters reflect her ability as a prose writer of unusual sensibility.

From the winner of the Guardian Children's Prize, comes a story of Medieval times, told from an entirely new perspective. Gatty the village girl - steadfast, forthright, innocent and wise - has never been further than her own village. But when she is is picked by Lady Gwyneth of Ewloe to join her band of pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem, Gatty's previously sheltered life changes forever. A joyful, heartrending, triumphant novel that creates a magnificently vivid and realistic picture of life and times in 1202, shown through the eyes of a young girl. Shortlisted for the 2008 Carnegie Medal, this is a companion novel to the Arthur trilogy (The Seeing Stone, At the Crossing Places, King of the Middle March).

Since the late twentieth century, there has been a strategic campaign to recover the impact of Victorian women writers in the field of English literature. However, with the increased understanding of the importance of interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century, there is a need to extend this campaign beyond literary studies in order to recognise the role of women writers across the nineteenth century, a time that was intrinsically interdisciplinary in approach to scholarly writing and public intellectual engagement.

Volume 2 of 2.